They knew that this judgment was false, but they had never challenged it, because of their own previous wishful thinking, because of their inability to control their own bureaucracy, and because, above all, of a belief that telling the truth to the American people was unimportant. They—both Kennedys, Rusk, Lodge, Harriman, Hilsman, Trueheart, Forrestal—knew the war was being lost, but they never got it down on paper or into their own statements, or into their briefings with congressional leaders. A lie had become a truth, and the policy makers were trapped in it; their policy was a failure,
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